[MERGED] Your Main PC - Pictures, specs and discussion <IMAGE HEAVY>

Solitaire

I'm wearing through my mouse mat. And I'm still using my ancient A4Tech wireless combo which dates all the way back to the invention of wireless peripherals (this was one of the first!... that didn't cost €140, anyway )

cherryghost

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Yeah, those 'hidden' costs are a killer really. Unless you're me, and using a keyboard from a Dell ordered in 2003 and a travel optical mouse so old that....it's just always been part of your life, not unlike a family pet. Oh, and also steal surge protected sockets from your parents place when you're visiting. Thanks to these factors, the price you see is the price you pay!

Have you a name for ol' reliable? :P

witnessmenow

Hey guys, posting off my new machine for the first time

I'm waiting on a few fans and a cable extender to come so its not fully finished. I'll throw up a few pictures when it is.

After building it I cant speak highly enough about the antec 300, its a really nice case to work with, loads of room! I personally think its a nice looking case too boot. Only complaint I would have is the cables for the power buttons etc are a bit short. Also the power LED one is 3 wide (two outside ones being used) so it doesnt fit my motherboard currently

Found it awkward enough to build because of the scythe ninja heatsink (never installed anything other than stock ones before, there is a lot more planning involved when using one!).

I added an extra slot for cable routing using a dremmel-type tool made my Black & Decker that I got in B&q for €26, I didnt sort myself out the rubber u-tubing yet so I just went for electrical insulating tape while im waiting.

I went for a stealth drive (i think thats what there called) where I atthaced the Drive bay cover to the Cd drive so it looks like there is nothing there, you press the bottom right hand corner of the drive bay cover and the cd ejects. Very happy with how it turned out. As you can see in the pictures i drilled through the drive bay so i can see the activity light. you can notice it but its not as promenent as its showing up in the pictures.

Will update with more pictures when its done.

Havent got a chance to OC it yet, kinda want to leave it untill i get the extra fans anyways.

Can anyone recomend a decent program to monitor the temp of the cpu? I downloaded coretemp , and its currently telling me one core is at 27c and the other is at 33c (not doing anything hectic, side panel off)

witnessmenow

No quite as impressive as other builds here, but im pretty happy whit it







and this is where all the cables live :pac:

papu

Just after Buying a Jigsaw and Replacing the Mesh with Blue Uv reactive Plexi

before



After

Solitaire

Did you cut the plexi with said jigsaw?! Very neat work in any case!

papu

Solitaire wrote: »

Did you cut the plexi with said jigsaw?! Very neat work in any case!

hehe Yeah cheers I did , Put the Mesh over the Plexi Traced around it in pen , and then went at it with the Jig saw , Not bad for a first attempt like Could have been Allot worse , Chuffed all the Holes Lined up and it bolted in alright

Just waiting now to install ma new 4870 and I'll snap some more shots


edit wooo

It's so much quieter now

massy086

i have the 300 also love it too put two green 120mm fans at the front so looks sweet gona do a side window next week and see how that looks witnessmenow can u tell me how you done the dvd drive trick i love it cheers

leninbenjamin

nobody noticed Kaimera's CPU fans were on arse-ways in that photo?

StopNotWorking

Are they? Is the general rule of thumb with fans that the open side is the one the air exhausts from? I swear one of my fans might be on backwards, either that or its running real slow:rolleyes:

leninbenjamin

StopNotWorking wrote: »

Are they? Is the general rule of thumb with fans that the open side is the one the air exhausts from? I swear one of my fans might be on backwards, either that or its running real slow:rolleyes:

meh... ignore rule of thumb as there's always one. it should be printed on them somewhere. I know the Noctua's have a nice little arrow on them.

kaimera

leninbenjamin wrote: »

nobody noticed Kaimera's CPU fans were on arse-ways in that photo?

they're blowing over the RAM

StopNotWorking

Are all of the fans(2 CPU and 1 rear) blowing air inwards? If any one of those fans is pushing/pulling air in the opposite direction to the other fans then your wasting energy and cooling potential. Plus you really don't need to cool your RAM that much. The general airflow of the case should be enough for that.

kaimera

StopNotWorking wrote: »

Are all of the fans(2 CPU and 1 rear) blowing air inwards? If any one of those fans is pushing/pulling air in the opposite direction to the other fans then your wasting energy and cooling potential. Plus you really don't need to cool your RAM that much. The general airflow of the case should be enough for that.

I'll have to double check but i'm thinking of turning off the rear case fan in any case.

leninbenjamin

kaimera wrote: »

they're blowing over the RAM

blowing hot air over the RAM and back into the case?

if you're worried about the RAM you could always mod the case to have a side fan blowing on them, I don't think it would disrupt the air flow as much.

kaimera

leninbenjamin wrote: »

blowing hot air over the RAM and back into the case?

if you're worried about the RAM you could always mod the case to have a side fan blowing on them, I don't think it would disrupt the air flow as much.

oddly enough it's not really hot air; the top case fan is sucking diesel off the HS as well.

the fans arent the easiest thing to pop off as you said lb!

TerrorFirmer

yeah actually looking at your fan setup on the cpu cooler it's a bit arseways, the fan facing the front is exhausting air, but it should be in taking air over the cooler fins, and then the rear exhaust would take out hot air. One to look into as a wrong airflow will make temperatures worse then if you didn't have that fan at all - hot air will just be going in all direction through the case. I can't see the fan on the side facing the back, but it can't be doing much good in the current setup even if its facing the right way as they'll all be pushing/pulling against each other! You can get ram coolers for about a tenner, but good airflow through case should be enough unless you're really good for gold on the OC. I only have a ram cooler because the blue LEDS are blingin'.

witnessmenow

massy086 wrote: »

i have the 300 also love it too put two green 120mm fans at the front so looks sweet gona do a side window next week and see how that looks witnessmenow can u tell me how you done the dvd drive trick i love it cheers

Its not exactly complicated (or well made :P), I'll take a few detailed pictures of it tomorrow.

Basically you take front faceplate off the DVD drive, then the Bezel (?, the piece of plastic attached to the part that comes out, normally has the DVD logo on it)

Dremel the drive bay cover so that it no longer has the clips,I used a cutting wheel , I also took a couple of mm off it all around and completely removed the bottom part (the pictures will explain it better)

You then have to build out the part that comes out, i did this with double sided sticky tape (Dsst) and card board(cb). So it boringly went Dsst/Cb and repeat untill it was fully flush with the rest of the case. There is a good few layers of this on mine.

I drilled the hole through it with a drill head that came with my dremmel to let through the LED, I probablly used a head that was a small bit to big as i took a small bit of the paint from the metal mesh off, thats why it is so noticable in the picture

To get the eject mechanism working I used a bit of statejically bent coat hanger, the pictures will show how it works, basically its a long flat piece that is taped over on the left of the drive, as it starts to get to the middle its bent outwards then over the actualy eject button its bent back in so its pointing at the button, so basically pressing anywhere on the part that bent out ejects the drive.

Great minds think alike



fools seldom differ though :P

massy086

thats true lol mind you my one is so loud its not even funny i took it apart the other day and drilled out the hard drive bay 4 better air flow and put the hd up in the 5.25 bay and i also spray,d the inside of the case black real happy how it turned out im also waiting on some cable extenders and then i,ll take it back apart and try do more cable managment drill two more holes me think and see wats wat then lol cheers 4 ur help on the stealth drive it looks sweet well done mate

ooPabsoo

i should probably try and do some cable management,not much space to work with

R3laX

[CPU] - QuadCore Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650
[MB] - Asus Maximus Extreme (Intel X38)
[Cooling] - Ultra-120 eXtreme + Scythe SlipStream 1200rmp
[Memory] - OCZ 4GB PC12800 DDRIII, 7-7-7-24, Kit of 2
[Video] - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 280
[Sound] - X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional Series
[HDD] - Seagate Barracuda ES.2 7200.2, 750GB, 32MB, SATAII
[Case] - Compucase MIDITOWER 6X ALU
[PSU] - OCZ 1010 Watt GameXstream.
[Optical] - LITE ON DVD+/-RW DL, RAM, LightScribe, SATA, Black
[Network] - 802.11g MIMO Wireless Network Adapter
[Display] - Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW, 22; WideScreen, Black, 1680x1050, 2ms.
[Mouse] - Logitech MX518 Gaming
[K-B] - Logitech G15
[HS] - Creative Fatal1ty Gaming HeadSet
+ Logitech QuickCam® Pro 9000


~ 1,5 year old, still... nice... very nice

(sorry, mob. phone quality...)

:cool:

Hank Scorpio

Thinking of selling my current PC to help with the purchase of my new one.

What ye reckon i could sell this for? Bear in mind its 2 months old and in perfect cond.

Intel Q8200 2.33 Quad core
Geforce 9500GS 512Mb
3 GIG of DDR RAM
650 GB HDD
Super Multi DVD-ROM Drive with LightScribe
Card reader
Windows Vista Premium

Rezident

CPU - E8600 EO 3.33GHz
MB - Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6
Video - 4890 2Gb Vapor-X

Memory - 4Gb Ballistix DDR2-800
HDD - WD Raptor 150Gb
Case - Antec P182
PSU - Corsair HX 620W

[Display] - Samsung SyncMaster 2232BW, 22; WideScreen, Black, 1680x1050, 2ms.
[Mouse] - Razer Copperhead
[K-B] - Eclipse II
[HS] - Icemat

StopNotWorking

Yaaaay got some new goodies^^ Mouse,Keyboard, screen and mouse mat :cool:

z0oT

Case: Coolermaster Centurion 590
MB: Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2GHz
CPU Cooler: Akasa Evo 98
RAM: 4Gb Crucial DDR3-1333
GFX: Sapphire HD4870 1GB
AUDIO: X-Fi Xtremegamer
HDs: 2 X Samsung 1TB's, 2 x WD Carviar's 750GB
PSU: Corsair TX620W
OS's: Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 4 & Windows XP Pro

Dingatron

StopNotWorking wrote: »

Yaaaay got some new goodies^^ Mouse,Keyboard, screen and mouse mat :cool:

Where'd you get that mouse mat?

CutzEr

Dingatron wrote: »

Where'd you get that mouse mat?

The shape of it is probably square, the rest of it hiding underneath the top part of that desk.

StopNotWorking

Dingatron wrote: »

Where'd you get that mouse mat?

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/1645070/art/steelseries/steelseries-qck-heavy-mou.html

Deliverance XXV

CASE: Antec 900
OS: Windows Vista/ Ubuntu Dual boot
MOBO: MSI P43 Neo-F
CPU: Intel Quad Q9550 2.8ghz (at 2.8ghz Not for long )
GFX: Evga NVidia 8800GTS 320MB
RAM: OCZ DDR2 PC8500 4GB Reaper (2x2GB)
PSU: Seasonic 600W
HDD: 1TB & 320MB Samsung internal Hard Drives
HDD: 2x 500GB internal WDC Hard drives
HDD: 1x 250GB external hard drive.
HSF: Scythe Ninja
OPT: 1x Blu-Ray Drive
OPT: 1x DVD-RW Drive

Peripherals:
1x 22" LG Widescreen Monitor
1x 21.5" LG Widescreen Monitor
Logitech G15 Keyboard
Saitek Eclipse II Keyboard
Microsoft Wireless mouse 5000
Microsoft Wired mouse 1000
Microsoft Fingerprint reader
Dell 5.1 Surround Sound system.

Effluo

And that's an Antec 900?